Introduction
Founded in 2013, eLiberare Association is a Romanian non-governmental organization committed to building a social movement against human trafficking and sexual exploitation. Our work focuses on four key pillars: prevention education, proactive identification, survivor engagement, and strengthening ecosystems to enhance policy frameworks. We are accredited and licensed by the Romanian Government to assist victims of trafficking, and have special consultative status with ECOSOC.
Since its establishment, eLiberare has collaborated with government institutions, community leaders, law enforcement, the private sector, and international organizations to address all forms of trafficking, including those facilitated through online spaces.
We welcome the opportunity to contribute to the fourth Appraisal of the Global Plan of Action (GPA), which comes at a pivotal moment – twenty-five years after the adoption of the Palermo Protocol1 and amid rapidly evolving global dynamics. eLiberare commends Member States and UN entities for their continued engagement and encourages the 2025 Appraisal to reinforce implementation through measurable, well-resourced, and survivor-informed action.
Advancing the Global Plan of Action: Addressing enduring challenges
Despite near-universal ratification of the Palermo Protocol, implementation gaps persist across prevention, protection, and prosecution. The latest UN data2 show that trafficking in persons remains a widespread and adaptive crime, with children, women, and marginalized populations disproportionately affected. Across the world, economic disparities, gender inequalities, conflict, and digital vulnerabilities continue to heighten exposure to exploitation.
Effective coordination among Member States, international and regional organizations, civil society, academia, and the private sector remains uneven. Existing mechanisms often rely on ad hoc collaboration rather than sustained, institutionalized coordination. The Appraisal offers an opportunity to strengthen multi-stakeholder engagement by embedding civil society and survivor networks within national and regional coordination platforms and by allocating predictable funding to these roles.
Governments should be encouraged to adopt comprehensive national action plans that include clear accountability frameworks, measurable indicators, and budget allocations. Coordination should extend across the full spectrum of relevant policy areas – migration, labour, child protection, education, and digital governance – ensuring that anti-trafficking strategies are mainstreamed into broader human rights and development agendas.
Enhancing cooperation and accountability
Data and intelligence sharing between jurisdictions and for preventive measures are still limited by legislative incompatibilities, data protection uncertainties, and lack of common standards and indicators. The Appraisal should reaffirm the importance of bilateral and multilateral mechanisms (including cross-border identification and referral mechanisms) for the exchange of information on trafficking trends, identification and investigation techniques, and victim referral processes, while maintaining full respect for data protection principles.
Strengthening financial investigations and cross-border cooperation is essential to dismantle organized criminal networks and ensure that proceeds of crime are confiscated and redirected to victim assistance funds and prevention programs. Member States should not only strengthen specialized training for law enforcement, prosecutors, and labour inspectors on victim identification, trauma-informed interviewing, and collaboration with civil society experts, but also implement community-wide awareness campaigns to foster public vigilance, reduce stigma, and encourage proactive identification.
Tackling trafficking for forced labour and other enduring forms
Trafficking for forced labour remains widespread, but convictions and victim identification are low. The 2025 Political Declaration should stress labour rights, business accountability, and supply chain due diligence in anti-trafficking policies.
Member States should adopt and implement human rights3 due diligence legislation aligned with the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights. This should cover public procurement, subcontracting, and recruitment chains, including in high-risk sectors such as agriculture, construction, domestic work, tourism, mining and farming. Governments should also ensure that labour inspection systems have sufficient capacity and mandates to screen and detect trafficking indicators (including for cases of domestic servitude), supported by effective referral mechanisms to protection and assistance services.
Best practices identified in recent years demonstrate the value of public-private partnerships that engage employers, trade unions, and technology platforms in prevention, reporting, and remediation. Replicating such models requires clear guidance, sustained political will, and long-term investment.
Leveraging technology responsibly: Emerging challenges
The misuse of digital technologies and artificial intelligence (AI) has transformed the landscape of trafficking, particularly in the recruitment and exploitation of victims online. Traffickers have adapted their methods to exploit anonymity, global reach, and algorithmic systems. At the same time, technology can be a powerful enabler for detection, prevention, and early intervention.
Member States are encouraged to update legal frameworks to address technology-facilitated trafficking, ensuring that electronic evidence can be lawfully collected, preserved, and shared in cross-border investigations, with full protection of victims’ privacy and rights. States should establish regulatory obligations for technology companies, requiring them to conduct human rights and child rights impact assessments, remove illegal content promptly, and design digital platforms with safety and prevention principles at their core.
Furthermore, governments, international organizations, and the private sector should invest in digital literacy and capacity-building for identification of online grooming and recruitment patterns. Enhanced cooperation between technology firms, national hotlines, and specialized NGOs can improve both prevention and reporting mechanisms.
Responding to trafficking for forced criminality and in humanitarian settings
Emerging evidence shows an increase in trafficking for forced criminality, including cyber-enabled fraud. Victims are often criminalized instead of recognized as victims. The Appraisal should reinforce the non-punishment principle, ensuring that trafficked persons are not penalized for offences directly resulting from their exploitation.
In humanitarian and mixed movement contexts, trafficking risks are amplified by displacement, statelessness, and limited access to protection. The Appraisal should encourage a route-based approach that integrates anti-trafficking safeguards into migration and asylum systems. Essential services – including medical, shelter, psychosocial, and legal assistance – must be made available along migration routes and at border points, without discrimination.
Toward a coherent and forward-looking Political Declaration
The fourth Appraisal offers a chance to consolidate lessons from the 2021 Political Declaration and set measurable targets for the next phase. The new Declaration should reaffirm core commitments to a human rights-based, gender-responsive, age-sensitive, disability-inclusive, community-owned, and survivor-centred approach. It should also integrate emerging priorities into the broader implementation framework of the Global Plan of Action.
To ensure coherence and sustainability, the 2025 Declaration should:
- Encourage States to align anti-trafficking actions with the Sustainable Development Goals, particularly targets 5.2, 8.7, and 16.2.
- Promote multi-stakeholder partnerships that include survivors, NGOs, academia, and the private sector as equal partners in policy development and monitoring.
- Develop internationally recognized indicators for victim identification, establish cross-border identification and referral mechanisms in key regions, and strengthen the implementation of existing national mechanisms (NIRMs).
- Establish clear mechanisms for periodic reporting and follow-up on implementation progress, supported by reliable, disaggregated data.
- Secure adequate and predictable funding for prevention, protection, and prosecution efforts, including direct support to civil society actors providing frontline services.
Conclusion
As a civil society organization committed to evidence-based action and survivor-centred responses, eLiberare Association underscores the importance of practical, coordinated, and measurable commitments in the 2025 Political Declaration. Building on the achievements of the past 25 years, this Appraisal must ensure that progress under the Global Plan of Action translates into tangible outcomes for those most at risk, and ultimately, a world free from trafficking in persons in all its forms.
- Protocol to Prevent, Suppress and Punish Trafficking in Persons Especially Women and Children, supplementing the United Nations Convention against Transnational Organized Crime, General Assembly resolution 55/25, adopted on 15 November 2000.
- 202,478 detected victims between 2020-2023 – UNODC, Global Report on Trafficking in Persons 2024, p. 20, https://www.unodc.org/documents/data-and-analysis/glotip/2024/GLOTIP2024_BOOK.pdf
- OHCHR, Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights: Implementing the United Nations ‘Protect, Respect and Remedy’ Framework, 2011, https://www.ohchr.org/sites/default/files/documents/publications/guidingprinciplesbusinesshr_en.pdf